This paper develops a sufficient-statistic formula for the unemployment gap-the difference between the actual unemployment rate and the efficient unemployment rate. While lowering unemployment puts more people into work, it forces firms to post more vacancies and to devote more resources to...

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it reviews the model of search and matching equilibrium and derives the properties of employment and unemployment equilibrium. Second, it applies the model to the study of employment fluctuations and to the explanation of differences in unemployment...

This paper studies job search behavior in the midst of a pandemic recession. We use long-running panel data from the Netherlands (LISS) and complement the core survey with our own COVID-specific module, conducted in June 2020, surveying job search effort of employed as well as unemployed...

This paper identifies and analyses a new effect related to the cyclical behavior of labor supply: the Entitled-Worker Effect (EWE). This effect is different from the well-known Added-Worker Effect (AWE) and Discouraged-Worker Effect (DWE). The EWE is a consequence of one of the most important...

Since the so-called Hartz IV reforms around 2005 and during the global crisis of 2008/2009, the German labor market featured mainly declining unemployment rates. We develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous skills to explore the role of structural and cyclical policies for this...

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system in the United States has played a decisive lifeline role in effectively mitigating the economic and social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted the largest expansion of UI programs in history, one that is unprecedented in scope, scale and cost....

We exploit a policy discontinuity at U.S. state borders to identify the effects of unemployment insurance policies on unemployment. Our estimates imply that most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of...

We exploit a policy discontinuity at U.S. state borders to identify the effects of unemployment insurance policies on unemployment. Our estimates imply that most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of...

Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U.S. states going back to January 1947. The constructed series are highly correlated with the Bureau of Labor Statics' state-level unemployment data, which are only available from...

Equilibrium labor market theory suggests that unemployment benefit extensions affect unemployment by impacting both job search decisions by the unemployed and job creation decisions by employers. The existing empirical literature focused on the former effect only. We develop a new methodology...